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Western’s mission to ‘Mars’

From the basement of a building on Western University’s campus, researchers and students are exploring the red planet’s surface.

Well, sort of.

The group of nearly three dozen is scouting a desert in Utah, a location selected because its terrain is similar to the surface of Mars.

The three-week project, involving students from universities across Canada, is the second phase of a collaboration between Western and the Canadian Space Agency that began last year.

A mission control room has been set up in the Physics and Astronomy Building, where a rover is being piloted to explore and collect samples from the Mars-like landscape in the western U.S. state.

The purpose of the simulation project is to assist the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and its global partners to test protocols for collecting samples on Mars and bringing them back to Earth for analysis — the main goal of NASA’s 2020 mission.

Though scientists have collected meteorites from Mars, the makeup of the samples has been altered by travelling through the Earth’s atmosphere, said Tim Haltigin, a CSA mission scientist.

“By bringing pristine rocks back from Mars, we really understand context and the way they were formed in the first place,” he said.

MP Kate Young operates a remote control rover located in Utah during a Mars exploration simulation exercise Wednesday at Western University. Helping her are PhD student Christy Caudill and research engineer Matthew Bourassa. (DEREK RUTTAN, The London Free Press)

Raymond Francis spent time in Western’s mission control room while completing his PhD in electrical and computer engineering.

Now working for NASA, Francis, 34, is involved in the U.S. space agency’s Mars exploration.

He returned Wednesday to his alma mater, where he praised the simulated missions for preparing him for a career with NASA.

“They teach you about what it’s like to operate something across a great distance and to try and do exploration through a limited lens,” Francis said. “Not only did it give me the relevant experience and skills, but it directly connected me to the people who got me into the real mission.”

With two rovers already exploring Mars, NASA plans to send another one in 2020 to seek signs of past life. The agency says it wants to send humans to Mars, the second smallest planet in the solar system, in the 2030s.

Want to step inside Western’s mission control room? Western is inviting the public for a behind-the-scenes look, followed by a panel discussion, on Nov. 10.